Big Stink, Little China, A Sequel

When did I write this? Write, as opposed to post. A distinction that oft escapes me ... I do not by nature pay much attention timelines. Which is how that Forty Years Since The Summer of Love crap snuck up on me. File under: What Makes Zo A Bad Blogger. I'd turn in my badge ... but to who? I mean, to whom? Not that I have a badge, to begin with.

Sometime around the Ides of March, maybe a little later:

I see by the newspaper that ol' Tim is busy today, representing, um, you. I had no idea the largeness of personage ... but do I care. What's fascinating about the current WWW Parade of Narcissism isn't just its infinitude, no no no! It is the way people get so big, so padded, so fatuous, even those with ol' Tim's layer of earnestness. So removed. I expect the answers aren't that complicated; it's just one of those days where it's hard to think straight. Not, of course, for guys like ol' Tim and Beavis, or is it Butthead, onstage, the two of them determining your future like it was theirs to play with, chuckle chuckle.

People seem to need someone to represent them. No ... people need someone to represent what they wish they were, so that they may applaud its embodiment. Other cultures ululate—we bang hands. Weird, either way, and without intrinsic meaning, except to raise a happy clamor. Ol' Tim, ol' Tim, I love you, you warm and fuzzy thing!

Tim and his endless badges thread. Bet he wishes he'd never allowed comments along about now. Badges have been hashed half to death, if not completely killed. People are talking about crap like civility. Fuck, if I wanted to be civil, I would move back to West Hartford. 

I did notice, avid little student of power-and-powerlessness that I am, that all the important people were replied to, and I mean pronto. It was quite a thread (okay, I skimmed) ... the badgers, the anti-badgers (no, nothing to do with animal rights) ... the long and deadly posts of engineer bloggers who really need to get out more often, the long and scrappy posts of those scrappy little types who can't let anything thing go ... and then this pearl, which I wanted to let shine on its own:

                "You shouldn't brand civility."

This comment was left by a young Swedish blogger, who in many ways needs a good slap upside the head, but I am nonetheless enchanted by it. Whether his intention was "You cannot brand civility" or "You really should not, to try and do so signals the end of all humanity," or even, "Fuck your stinking badges and the horse they rode in on," it seemed to me a voice that harkened to something larger and as yet unseen.

A warning away, perhaps, from Web 2.0, the goal of which appears to be precisely that. To brand not only civility but every other aspect of being human and sell back to us. To our own immense, irreplaceable loss.

Note on method: 
1. trivialize the need-desire-feeling into a small, manageable size
2. give it a focus-grouped name that drops a key vowl
3. launch the beta by invitation only, creating buzzzz ...  

edited june 16 to add: 4. profit!!!